Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

One of the things that Storm Éowyn exposed was the lack of resilience in our monocultural forestry model. Unfortunately, this is set to get worse due to Coillte's recent decision to silently scrap Coillte Nature, its not-for-profit wing that is supposed to be dedicated to the restoration, regeneration and rehabilitation of nature across Ireland. In Orwellian fashion, Coillte claims that scrapping Coillte Nature will allow it to reach its climate and biodiversity targets. Is this to be done through the Nature Trust, which sells woodland credits to companies in return for investment in planting? Coillte tries to inspire confidence by claiming that this is not a carbon offsetting programme but Bank of Ireland, which developed the Nature Trust woodland credit scheme, describes it as "a carbon offsetting social enterprise". It is clear where the Minister for Sitka spruce, Michael Healy-Rae's emphasis is. Blatant greenwashing and forestry for profit is not going to avert the climate and biodiversity catastrophes that we face. Will the Taoiseach outline how this came about and will he reverse track on the current forestry-for-profit model that is turning counties like Leitrim into biodiversity dead zones?

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